Grab a cup of coffee…cuz this one’s gonna take a while. It’s roughly 1986. I’m sitting at my father’s dinner table all by myself. Well, not ALL by myself – I have a half of a chicken pot pie to keep me company. Where is everyone else you ask? Upstairs…yucking it up to the television. You see, dinner ended an hour ago for them – just not for me. Not while I have half a pot-pie left. What does this have to do with anything you ask?
You see, this is my one memory from my childhood where I attempted to ‘hold out’ and not eat my dinner. I was 10 for goodness sakes – and chicken pot pie to a 10 year old is borderline torture. And while I’m a little fuzzy on the details, I’m fairly certain I lost the battle and ended up choking down the remainder of the cold dinner. Not for lack of effort though…and it looks as though my lovely daughter has the same determination flowing through her veins.
Lately, my little princess has decided she is going to stop eating her dinner. Completely. I mean she is dead-set against cleaning her plate and will turn her nose up at 99% of the food put in front of her (yes – including chicken pot pies). In fact, if you could bottle this kind of commitment and sell it – you could make a million. Anyone who ever wanted to quit something could take a dose of ‘Ellie’ and never look back. I don’t know what has happened, I just know that I can’t even sit across from her at the table any more because I just want to pull out what few remaining hairs I have left.
Take Monday night for example. I fix ‘Breakfast for Dinner’…it’s one of her favorite meals – and in fact she actually requested it! So I put her plate in front of her…2 waffles, teensy amount of scrambled eggs, and 6 raspberries. Sounds innocent enough right? Ugh. Little did I know those little red bastards would lead to a battle of epic proportions. Fast forward 15 minutes into our dinner, I notice she hasn’t touched her eggs or berries. Innocently, I say “Ellie – I would like you to eat your raspberries if you want a treat’….
It begins.
I could tell from the second the words left my lips that it was on. She started staring down into her lap and made every effort to avoid any sort of eye contact. I make my statement again – this time with a tad more emphasis. More staring into her lap, although now she has an annoyed ‘I’m-ignoring-my-father’ look on her face. I feel my blood pressure begin to rise…yet I try to keep my cool. My inner-dialog is going nuts: “I’m not being mean am I? I mean, they’re just raspberries! She loves these things and eats them by the dozen through the summer!” I decide one final urging is what she needs…“Ellie – eat your raspberries.’ I think you can guess the response I got. We continue to stare at each other across the table like a couple of gunslingers in a Clint Eastwood movie. I squeeze my fork to within an inch of it’s life as I refuse to back down.
At this point, Jen and Cameron have realized this movie isn’t going to have a happy ending and are eating their food with such determination you would think their life depended on it. Me on the other hand? I have given up on my own dinner and chosen to put ALL my energy into getting my lovely daughter to eat these 6 minuscule, meaningless little pieces of fruit. Seriously – with the effort I found myself putting into this ridiculous task you would have thought the fate of the nation rested on Ellie eating her raspberries. I might has well have offered up “Ellie – if you don’t eat your fruit, the economy is going to continue to suffer!” Now let me be clear, I am well aware that I’m out of my gourd and should just give in to the fact that she isn’t going to eat them…but I abandon all logic and push on. Can’t quit now! (can I?) And after 10 more minutes of glares and stares, she gives in and manages to finish her berries.
WHEW! I sit back in my chair and search for some sort of ‘positive takeaway’ from the past 30 minutes…yet I come up empty handed. Why in the world did I feel it necessary to force my daughter to stuff 6 raspberries in her mouth? Does it make her a better child? Does it make me a better father? No. In the ‘grand scheme’ of things, it’s about as meaningless of an occurrence as one of CJ’s 39 poops each week. Would we notice if it were 38? Or 40? Wait, where was I? Raspberries…right.
So to sum up this embarrassing and idiotic story, I find myself doubting my skills and motivations as a parent. I spend every second of every day trying to be the absolute BEST father and husband I can be – but then I go and do something this stupid! If I was watching a movie, and it had a scene like the one above in it, I would shake my head and wonder what that dad’s problem is. “Can’t he see the big picture?” I would ask. The thing is, I CAN see the big picture, but for some reason I continue to wage these mini-battles that have no importance and are not worth engaging in. Oy vay. Do all kids go through a not-eating phase? Did Cameron – and I just have chosen to block it out? Has Ellie ever eaten dinner?
I’ve said it a hundred times, but tomorrow night I’m going to do it. I’m just going to let the kiddos eat whatever they want. If it’s everything…great. If it’s nothing….great. At least Cameron won’t have to wave a white flag if he wants the salt passed. (It’s really not that bad – but you get the point). So thank you for letting me get a tad personal here. Wait – this is my site…I can do whatever I want. Now eat your raspberries! (here we go again)
TTFN,
Matthew
(PS. In case you’re wondering…’yes’ – Ellie did indeed ask for a treat once she finished her raspberries. Gotta love kids!)
SO…TELL ME…
WHAT WAS YOUR ‘TORTURE-FOOD’? DO YOUR KIDS NOT EAT? DOES IT DRIVE YOU CRAZY?
COMMENTS ARE ALWAYS WELCOME (and appreciated)
We are a family of five, living happily in Colorado. And since we find ourselves running out of hours in the day, we built this little site to keep friends and family up to speed on what's going on in our lives.
Ok, I remember a couple nights like you had. Both as a parent and as a child. My horror meals were eggs golden rod on toast and chipped beef gravy on toast. I still gag just thinking of them. Those memories did help me a bit in dealing with the meals my kids did not want to eat but there is still that need of a parent to try and control the eating process. As you have learned it doesn’t always turn out good and we feel worse that the kids could ever think of feeling.
I know it was a bad experience for you but you wrote a great story. You are learning. Love you!
My story is also about Ellie, although I had my fair share of things that I wouldn’t eat when I was little. I didn’t have specific foods…really just any food. Poor Ellie, she was doomed from the beginning. Mom didn’t eat, dad didn’t eat.
Anyway, my food story is about salmon loaf (it really is VERY good). Ellie was so excited about it. She helped me get the ingredients for it, she helped me make it, and she helped me serve it. We sat down to eat and she didn’t want it. She wouldn’t even take a bite to see what it tasted like. It was just me and the kids on this particular night, so they are the only witnesses to my legendary fit. Needless to say, I got absolutely nowhere. Even when I told her she would be eating the salmon loaf for breakfast, snack, lunch, whatever until she ate it.
The next morning happened to be the day we were having brunch with Chris, Molly & Emily. I decided to take it a little easy on her and allow her to have her breakfast with the salmon instead of the salmon all by itself. On this particular morning, she loved Matt’s breakfast, and ate all of it…except the salmon. ARGH!!! We continued the fight the entire time our guests were here, and I eventually sent her to her room.
The fight ensued the rest of the morning, and while CJ was sleeping I mentioned that we would be going to the mall around dinner time (she had not eaten the salmon at lunch either), and it would be too bad that we couldn’t have dinner there because she hadn’t tasted the salmon. She told me she wanted to eat it, went inside, and proceeded to quite calmly eat the entire serving. She even commented that it was good. I didn’t have to push or yell or anything. A mere 9 hours of fighting over it and she finally ate it. Amazing. Amazingly stupid. Never again (until tomorrow).
LIVER for me…….no matter what I tried to cover it up with it was still LIVER!!! But of course my Mom thought we ALL needed liver to survive childhood. Yuck and to this day I have never eaten liver again!!!! Uncle Charley will go along with Grandma regarding Eggs Goldenrod and the chipped Beef on toast. I’m not sure where the recipe for Eggs goldenrod came from ( another mean mom from the past maybe) but I have to say I did love chipped beef but on biscuits not toast!! I know your cousin Brandon would have to say brussel sprouts and for Rick it would have to be peas. You’re not being mean and YES every child goes through not wanting to eat so don’t be too hard on yourselves just be sure to clean your plates to set an example for the kiddos.
Liver…yuck. That’s one of those foods that I can safely say I don’t like (even if I’ve never tried it!)
And I’m right there with Brandon on the brussel sprouts…however Jen and Ellie LOVE ‘em. I think they’ve got problems.
Thanks for the great reply and I’m so curious what this ‘Eggs Goldenrod’ is. Hmm…
(glad you figured out the new layout too! I had missed your comments!!)
Take care
i love the way you write!
ok. so you may think im strange. but im not a mean mom. lets start there
my opinion….you did nothing wrong. in fact, not backing down was probably the best thing you couldve done. little issue or not….she knows you mean business. she doesnt know that silly little raspberries are no big deal in the big scheme of things…but she will know now that when dad says sumpin that crazy man aint backin down.
is that so bad?
it isnt about the raspberries…its about the will of a child and the consistency and word of the parent. its about respect and boundaries.
at least, thats how i see it.
should i run now???
No need to run.
I’m glad you stopped by.
You’re correct that it’s about respect and boundaries. And I wouldn’t consider Jen or myself ‘mean’ – but I would say we can be ‘strict’…which (if done right) isn’t a bad thing.
As I grew up there was no such thing as not liking a meal. either I never thought of it or it was not allowed. and we had all kinds of interesting foods. liver, brussel spruts, steak and kidney pie and on and on!
kidney pie?
oh my word!
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww (except the brussel sprouts)!